In Two-Child China, a New Dilemma

Beijing recently became the fifth region in China to official implement a long-awaited loosening of the country’s family planning rules, announcing last week that resident couples will now be allowed to have two children if one of the parents is an only child.

The move is bound to make things easier for a number of families in the Chinese capital, but for one Beijing resident, the new policy means a new dilemma: whether to ignore people with siblings in the search for a spouse.

“It does open up a legal pathway to a second child, but if I want to have two kids, I can only marry a man who is a single child, or someone belonging to a minority,” explains Tan Yudan, 25 years old, the third daughter in a rural family that has four children. “This limits my dating options by more than 50%.”

There are no reliable estimates on how many Chinese people have siblings, but the 2010 census showed close to a third of Chinese women have had more than one child (in Chinese). Most, like Ms. Tan, are from rural areas, where having a second child has been allowed since the 1980s ifthe first child was a girl.

Government pronouncements suggest the rural exception will remain in place, but that doesn’t matter to Ms. Tan, a PhD student in international law who earned a Beijing residence permit, or hukou, after going to university in the capital. Urban hukou, especially in cities like Beijing, are highly coveted because they grant access to better health care, education and other social services. Now, however, being an urban resident has put her in an awkward position when it comes to searching for a partner.

“I should not have to worry whether or not the person is a single child. Instead, I would rather focus on how happy we could be in marriage. What if I had a boyfriend with siblings right now? Would I break up with him?” she says. “Luckily, I am single, so I have the chance to consider looking for someone suitable. But that also means that, without even considering a potential’s boyfriend character, talent, economic situation or looks, my pool of potential partners greatly decreases.”

Trained as a legal scholar herself, she is considering her legal, as well as less legal or even illegal, options for children. Legally speaking, she said, she could have two children with an only child, someone from an ethnic minority, a wounded member of the military or a disabled person. She could also have a child with one man then get remarried to someone who doesn’t have children yet, have a second child while studying abroad, or give birth to a first child with a disability.

Or she could decide to defy the rules and pay a “child rearing fee” to the local authorities. Technically, having children outside the one-child policy regulations is not a crime and is therefore not a fine-able offence, but the fee serves as a de facto fine. For the first “surplus” child, the fee ranges from three to six times a couple’s annual disposable income. Exact figures are determined by local authorities, who take into account the couple’s combined income as well as the average income within the region.

Well known movie director Zhang Yimou recently drew attention to the fee system after he confessed to having multiple children and paid $1.2 million to authorities in the eastern city of Wuxi.

“I am not Zhang Yimou,” Ms. Tan says of her ability to afford going the fee route. Her other option? “I could always go abroad and get a foreign nationality, thus evading Chinese domestic restrictions. But that would be far from ideal.”

Local authorities are paying close attention to the central directions for one-child policy reform, with more than 20 provinces announcing that implementation of the new rule is on their to-do list for 2014.

It’s not clear how many people share Ms. Tan’s situation. And to be sure, many young Chinese, including Ms. Tan, wonder whether they are willing to take on the cost of a second child even without having to pay the fees. But with the country urbanizing rapidly, at least a few Chinese people from multi-child families may soon be forced to make some hard romantic calculations – one more argument in favor of listening to the demographers and scrapping the one-child restrictions together.